Pinterest is a social network that allows users to visually share, curate, and discover new interests by visual posting, also known as “pinning” images or videos to their own or others’ pin boards on the Pinterest website.

Since the launch of Pinterest in 2010, the service has built a membership of 70 million users and generate web traffic activity of 2.5 billion unique monthly visitors to date. Pinterest is currently driving more referral traffic than Google +, YouTube, and LinkedIn combined. Pinterest is becoming the fastest growing social media platform for aspiring entrepreneurs and new businesses to grow their brand and services alike.

Pinterest offers a new feature recently, calledPinterest for Business, where all businesses will be able to pay to promote their content in search and category feeds on the site. This gives an opportunity for businesses to market and promote its products and services with the use of pins on their own website and Pinterest website as well to generate potential leads and prospective clients interest in their products and services.

Best Practice for Marketing on Pinterest (Source: YouTube)

Pinterest buyers spend more money, more often, and on more items than any of the other top social media sites combined. Not only that, Pinterest generates 4 times more revenue (opportunity sales based on per click) than Twitter and 27% more than Facebook. Advertisers that use Pinterest for Business would tend to spend more of their advertising budget on Pinterest knowingly that female users is much higher (being 83% of the user demographic) compared to male users. As well, that average users spends an hour and 17 minutes on the site on a daily basis.

How To Use Pinterest For Business (Source: YouTube)

Several prominent companies are already taking advantage of the Pinterest for Business services to generate awareness and promotion of their products and services to the masses. Some examples of brands that are using Pinterest For Business as to promote their services and products such asEsty, that promote and market handcrafts designs and products from their users.Four Seasons Hotel and Resortsoffers special promotions and discounts on their hotel services with stunning visuals of their hotel locations over the world. Finally,Sony Corporationfor marketing their upcoming consumer products, video game console, or even a specialized gadgets so that consumers can take notice and feel impulse to purchase their products.

Lessons for others:

Like every other social media platforms, does it work for the businesses in terms of growth and generate potential sales or leads? That determination depends on how the business best market and promote itself thru the means of social media channels with business ads. With regards to Pinterest For Business, it seems to be a very effective and offers a high conversion rate in terms of opportunity sales and generate interest in the brand products and services in the process. Here are the current statistics regarding marketing on Pinterest For Business as follows:

Pinterest is the 4th most-used social media site and growing consistently by 22% every quarter.

Pinterest has 70 million users.

There are over ½ million verified business accounts on Pinterest.

Pinterest has over 2.5 billion average monthly page views.

Pinterest users spend an average of 98 minutes per month on Pinterest.

The average amount per order that derives from Pinterest traffic is between$140 and $180.

Pinning For Profits – How To Use Pinterest For Business Part One By Afton Negrea (Source: Soundcloud)

Pinning For Profits – How To Use Pinterest For Business Part Two By Afton Negrea (Source: Soundcloud)

Recently, Pinterest has released Pinterest Web Analytics tool. Pinterest Web Analytics is available for free to Pinterest Business users with a verified website address. Pinterest Web Analytics can collect a long-range of data connected to a Pinterest account. With Pinterest Web Analytics tool you can retrieve various data as follows:

Which content has been pinned directly from your website.

Number of unique visitors who have pinned content from your website.

Which of your pins have been repinned.

Number of unique visitors who have repinned your pins.

Number of times your pins have appeared in search results across multiple platforms, including the desktop Pinterest website, Android or iOS devices.

Number of unique visitors who have repinned your pins.

Number of unique visitors who saw your pins on given dates.

Number of users who have visited your site through Pinterest.

The number of times users have clicked on your website.

The changes in your statistics between periods.

Everyone that is associated with Pinterest For Business have found new ways to generate leads and opportunity sales by pinning and showcasing their products on their boards. Here are honorable mentions and success stories of a few companies that uses Pinterest For Business to create opportunity sales and generate interest in the brand products and services as follows:

1. Success Story: Allreceipes

As the world’s largest digital food brand, Allrecipes reaches a global digital community of 30 million aspiring home cooks who discover and share everyday food inspiration. They make it simple for home cooks to connect around shared food experiences.

Leading up to the busy holiday season, Allrecipes wanted to make sure they were the first place to go for anyone planning a meal. They added the Pin It button on each recipe page after noticing a big surge in referral traffic from people on Pinterest. They also designed a new page template where the Pin It button is above the fold adjacent to recipe photos and videos, which made it especially easy for community members to share recipes.

“Since we added the Pin It button to our site, we’ve seen a significant increase in the volume of recipes and videos shared daily—resulting in dramatic boosts in the daily social referrals Allrecipes receives from Pinterest. This makes our content more discoverable, which grows our community.”

– Esmee Williams, VP of Brand Marketing for Allrecipes.

Allrecipes saw dramatic results. Within three months, more than 50,000 recipes were pinned resulting in 139 million Pinterest impressions, and clicks on Allrecipes’ Pinterest content increased more than 900%.

2. Success Story: Kraft Foods

Kraft Foods provides millions of families around the world with the staples they need to make delicious meals. The brand adds thousands of recipes to Pinterest, the greatest source of referral traffic back to Kraftrecipes.com.

Kraft wants to make it easy for people to discover and share everyday, achievable meals. They joined Pinterest in January 2012 because the service reached Kraft’s desired audience and had significant scale. It also helped that recipes were already one of the most popular interests on Pinterest.

“Pinterest has become a powerful tool for us to garner real-time insights, mine data and influence content creation, curation and amplification,”

Kraft team reviews repins and click-through rates from Pinterest and data from other social channels to learn what people like. They also look to see what other food Pins are popular, which helps them identify food trends, like treats in a jar, push pops or baby reveal cakes. Once they spot what’s working, they immediately optimize content throughout their marketing.

3. Success Story: Sony Corporation

Sony Electronics makes innovative tech products that entertain, educate and support people all over the world. The consumer electronics giant wanted to reach a more lifestyle-oriented audience and attract sales, so they turned to Pinterest. Pinners loved Sony’s Pins and now, the company sees website traffic and revenue as a result of engaging with the community.

When Sony joined Pinterest, they noticed how much of their stuff was already being pinned. With the help of veteran employees, Sony created boards and added Pins that matched what pinners liked, including new products, vintage ads and unique gadgets. They have continued to evolve their boards, pinning everything from gorgeous spaces featuring tech to images taken with Sony products.

“Pinterest has been a critical tool in helping us expand our social media community. Our page lets us interact with a lifestyle audience, allows us to beautifully reflect the spirit of the brand through images, and best of all, drives revenue to our site.”

– Callen Green, Senior Social Media Specialist for Sony Corporation.

Sony sent out a dedicated email marketing about Pinterest to make people aware of their Pins. The visual-heavy email explained Pinterest and suggested a few Sony boards to follow.

The email marketing was a rousing success with an open rate 67% higher than their set goal and a click-through rate 16% above the goal. This led the Sony team to resend the email two weeks later, which drove a 15% increase in subscriber growth and a major jump in Pinterest followers.

Every company that promote their brand on Pinterest For Business has their own success story. Very important that any entrepreneur or new business do the research first, to see if their product or services is appropriate fit to market and promote on Pinterest For Business. To understand that to advertise on Pinterest For Business means that you will be spending more in terms of ad money to promote your product or service but you will be getting a greater return of investment (ROI) in the long run.

Pinterest For Business is growing at a steady pace and would eventually overtake the likes of Facebook and Twitter in the business advertisement medium. With the attraction of the female users, Pinterest over time can shift the commerce of spending being exchange because brands have found a unique platform to promote their products and services to audience at large and benefit greatly in the process. Pinterest is becoming the fastest growing social media platform for aspiring entrepreneurs and new businesses to grow their brand and services to unprecedented heights that even Facebook and Twitter cannot completed with.